How to make great homemade pizza

If you’re like me, you’ve made your share of homemade pizzas that were just kind of…meh. Not horrible, but not great. I followed recipes, and I bought a pizza stone, but my pizzas were still just not that awesome.

Then, as so often happens, Cook’s Illustrated came to the rescue.

(And as I so often say, no, they didn’t pay me to say that. I just think they’re totally fantastic.)

It turns out, I was using my pizza stone all wrong. I wasn’t preheating the stone in the oven, I wasn’t turning my oven up high enough, and I wasn’t sliding my pizza onto the hot stone, using a pizza peel.

Plus, I was using the wrong kind of flour in my pizza dough.

Things are much better when you do what Cook’s Illustrated says.

I’ve been making my pizzas this way for years now, but for some reason, I never got around to posting the method here. We’re going to rectify that today, though.

The essential tools:

Baking Stone/Pizza Peel

Ok. So, to make good pizza, you are going to need a baking stone and a pizza peel (a pizza peel is a paddle-shaped piece of wood that you use to slide the pizza onto the hot stone). A baking sheet or metal pizza pan will not produce the same results, so I highly recommend springing for a real pizza stone.

I got a stone and peel set at Bed, Bath, and Beyond (using one of their 20% off coupons, of course), but Cook’s recommends this Bialetti 4-Piece Pizza Stone Set, which comes with a stone, a peel, a pizza cutter, and a chrome serving rack, all for $30.

Or if you want something bigger and want to buy a pizza peel separately, their favorite was this Old Stone Oven 14-Inch by 16-Inch Baking Stone, which is awesomely large. I can see how the size of that would be quite an advantage, especially if you’re using it to make something that’s not round, like calzones.

Bread Flour

Normally I swear by Gold Medal All-Purpose unbleached flour, but pizza dough is just not the same with that flour (it sends your pizza directly over to the “meh” end of things.)

So, when I’m making pizza, I pay for the King Arthur bread flour. It’s totally worth it.

Parchment Paper

This will go underneath your pizza and will help it to slide neatly from the pizza peel to the hot baking stone. You can just dust the pizza peel with cornmeal, but that’s not very foolproof and can lead to amoeba-shaped pizzas.

A (very, very) Hot Oven

Pizza bakes up the best in a ridiculously hot oven, so it’s no wonder that my 350° pizzas were sort of lackluster. You’ll need to heat your pizza stone in a 500° F oven for at least 30 minutes before you slide the pizza onto the stone. When you’re used to baking things at 350°, 500° can seem a little scary, but it really does make your pizza better.

Alrighty. Here’s how to make the dough and put together your awesome pizza.

In a measuring cup, combine 1/2 cup of warm water and a package of yeast.

Meanwhile, in the bowl of a stand mixer, combine 2 cups of flour and 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt.

Then add 1 1/4 cups of warm water to the yeast/water mixture.

Pour this into the mixer bowl, add the olive oil, and let the mixer run for several minutes.

Then stir in the rest of the flour, and turn the dough out onto a floured counter to knead it for a minute or two.

At which point it should look like this.

Put the dough back into the mixer bowl, cover it with a wet tea towel, and let it rise for an hour.

About 30 minutes before the dough is done rising, put your pizza stone in the oven and turn it to 500°.

Once the dough is done rising, turn it out onto a floured surface and divide it in half. Or you can do like I do and make a big pizza with 2/3 of the dough, and a smaller pizza (or breadsticks) with the other third.

To make a nice round pizza, shape each portion into a neat ball, and let the ball sit on the counter for a few minutes. This will help the gluten relax and will make shaping the pizza a little easier.

Roll the dough out into a round shape (I do a combination of rolling with a rolling pin and pressing with my fingers.) I like to keep the edges a little bit on the thicker end of things, but do as you like.

Place the dough on a piece of parchment paper on your pizza peel and brush the edges of the dough with olive oil.

Spread tomato sauce over the dough. The amount is sort of up to you, but don’t go crazy with the sauce or your pizza slices will be a little messy.

Sprinkle the pizza with cheese, and add any other toppings you so desire.

Open your oven door, and using a bit of a flicking motion, slide the pizza off of the pizza peel and onto the hot stone.

Bake for 8-12 minutes, or until the crust and cheese are nicely browned.

With the rest of the pizza dough, I often make breadsticks, or I make half into a pizza and half into breadsticks. For breadsticks, I just leave the dough plain, and after it’s baked, I brush it with melted butter, and then sprinkle it with garlic salt and Parmesan cheese.

So, now there’s nothing standing between you and awesome pizza. Go make some!

Combine warm water and yeast in a 2 cup measuring cup. In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine 2 cups of bread flour and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt.

Add 1 1/4 cups water to yeast/water mixture, and add to the flour mixture along with the olive oil. Beat on medium speed for 3 minutes, and then stir in a much of the remaining flour as you can. Turn dough out onto floured surface and knead for several minutes. Place dough back in bowl, cover with a wet tea towel, and let rise until doubled, about 1-1 1/2 hours.

Place pizza stone in oven and heat at 500° for at least 30 minutes.

Punch dough down and divide in half. Shape each half into a neat ball, and let rest on the counter for 5 minutes. Roll each half into a pizza round and place on parchment paper. Brush edges of crust with olive oil. Spread tomato sauce over dough, sprinkle with cheese, and add toppings.

Slide pizza peel under parchment paper and transfer pizza to preheated stone, using a flicking motion. Bake for 8-12 minutes, or until crust and cheese are browned.

Comments

I love this tutorial! I learned all my pizza making skills from you in previous posts but this is very thorough and I’ve only been using 450 for my oven. For your cheese sticks I highly recommend doing those things you do before it bakes, and adding some shredded cheese also. Tastes just likes Pizza Hut cheese sticks

I don’t think the problem is that the paper will make the pizza unsafe to eat or anything…maybe more that the paper won’t hold up as well at such high heats?

Any parchment sticking out from the pizza will turn brown, but mine has never had any issues apart from that. It’s never come close to bursting into flames or anything, and from what I read on the internet, other people’s experience mimics mine.

Cool, but what happens when you need more than one pizza? Use two stones on two oven racks? Any thoughts on this? Baking them one after the other would be kind of a drag. I suppose I should experiment with baking two at once.

One pizza doesn’t cut it at my house. Even two round ones on the Pampered Chef pizza stones haven’t been enough lately. Lectures on portion control have not worked…not when it comes to homemade pizza.

Well, because this one bakes in 8-12 minutes, we can make it work. I bake one, put the other one in right away, and I don’t call everyone to come sit down and eat until the first pizza has cooled for a few minutes. So, then the second one is usually out of the oven before we’ve totally devoured the first one.

Pizza day is definitely a time where I wish I had two ovens, though. That would be SO handy.

Just thought I’d mention, if you have two racks in your oven, and you’re willing to buy two stones, you can bake two at a time. I usually switch racks halfway through baking, in addition to rotating the pizzas 180 degrees so they bake more evenly, and they come out pretty perfectly!

While this method DOES make truly fantastic pizza, please try your grill sometime. Straight on the grate. On high. For 3 minutes, the flip’n’top, then 3 minutes more. Have your toppings all ready in bowls. You are welcome. We eat pizza 1-2x/week in the summer because we love this method so much.

This was perfect – I’ve heard most of these tricks before about using a pizza peel and a hot pizza stone, but I’ve never seen them all put in order so it’s so easy to use (and using parchment paper on the end looks sooooo much easier than cornmeal!)

Looks delicious! Have you ever tried putting your pizza stone 2/3 up in your oven, instead of towards the bottom? America’s Test Kitchen recommended this, as it more closely replicates the salamander-style ovens of most mom and pop pizzerias.

I have my own method that doesn’t require a pizza stone or peel that seems to work for our family. I begin with the pizza on a baking sheet, then a minute or two before it’s completely done baking, I slide the whole thing off the baking sheet and directly onto an oven rack. My family enjoys these pizzas tremendously.

Carole, the recipe is for one pizza. I’d definitely double (or even triple) for 6 adults and 2 toddlers depending on how ravenous you guys are. One pizza would probably work well for 3 people and a toddler

Can I ask what you pay for the UB flour? and where do you get it? It seems way overpriced in the stores here. I just recently started using it, and can tell a difference, and would like to find it cheaper!

In my experience in a variety of stores over the years, for any given brand bread flour is the same price as AP flour. King Arthur flour is more expensivethan Gold Medal or Pillsbury, but has by far the best reputation.

I wish bread flour were the same price as all purpose in our area. Gold Medal, King Arthur, etc.–they are all more expensive when it comes to their bread flour, and the price just continues to rise. I’ve been using unbleached white flour recently to see if it will work as well. So far I haven’t noticed a big difference, but I have increased my kneading time a bit to try to compensate for the lesser amount of gluten.

I should have mentioned–I can get the unbleached flour for the same price as regular all purpose flour here. (That’s brand name flour, the generic, store brand AP flour is cheaper, but I don’t have as good luck with it.)

That’s really too bad. One thing you can do is let the dough rise for longer amount of time, in a cooler place.

Another thought that occurs to me is more work but might do the trick: price compare gluten + AP flour to bread flour. Maybe that cost will be less. Gluten is available as fancy stores, sometimes supermarkets, and online.

Yum! I make homemade pizza or calzones weekly for my crew, but I tend to rush the dough and not let it rise (boo). I am going to give your recipe and techniques a shot . . . and ask for a pizza peel and stone for my next birthday.

Short answer: gluten level. Bread flour has much more gluten than AP does.

Longer answer: gluten is the stuff that allows a flour product to get elastic, rise well, and hold the air bubbles that yeast produces. The more gluten, the more rise you can get from your product. Compare shortbread (very tender dough, no rise, made with very low gluten flour) with country bread (elastic dough, lots of rise, made with high gluten flour).

What defines how much gluten there is in a flour is the protein level. AP flour has roughly 8-9% protein. Bread flour has 11-12%, and King Arthur bread flour has another percentage point or so. (I’m doing this from memory so the numbers might not be exactly correct.) At the other end of the range is cake or pastry flour, which has around 5% protein.

I’m gluten free, but a big fan of pizza, so have been experimenting with making my own gluten free bases over the past few months and have found two that have worked well. I haven’t been able to replicate a chewy pizza base yet, but I like the thin and crispy ones better (more space for toppings!).

Cat, when my kids were small, one of their favorite things was biscuit dough pizzas. These are just mini pizzas. I’d use those canned biscuits for these. (I know I’m an awful mom for serving such a horrid food product to my children!)

But you can use homemade biscuit dough, too. Obviously not the chewy texture you get with a yeast dough.

Also, you can use flour tortillas for a thin crust. These cook up super fast. A favorite of my son, when he was in high school. He could come home and make himself one of these in 5 minutes.

1) Question: I have tried this CI recipe several times and have the same problem each time – the dough springs back when I roll/pat/spread it out. Can you help me figure out why? I’ve tried the recipe with AP flour, bread flour, and a mix of both.

2) Question: again with this recipe, my crust comes out doughy rather than thin/crispish. I preheat the oven & pan a long time, using an upsidedown jelly roll pan since I don’t have a pizza stone.

3) Observation: I like my crust crisp and this recipe doesn’t come out crisp for me. In fact it’s downright floppy on the middle corner. To address this problem I bake the crust by itself for a few minutes, then top it, then finish baking.

4) Observation: a half-baked crust like above, can be frozen for later use. This works well for me because it’s the crust that’s time consuming. If the crust is in the freezer, I can go from 0 to home-made pizza in less than 30 min, including making the sauce from scratch.

WilliamB,
America’s Test Kitchen did a show on making pizzeria-style pizza a while back. They said the key to getting your dough to relax, and not spring back, is to allow it to rest in the fridge, overnight, if possible. A friend of mine now runs their family-owned pizzeria, and he tells me this is what they do. They start the day’s pizza dough, the day before.

To get a crisp crust, without the pizza stone, this is what I do. I bake the pizza on a baking sheet until almost done. Then a couple of minutes before it’s finished baking, I use a metal spatula to loosen the pizza from the baking sheet and slide it off onto the bare rack. It browns and crisps nicely on the bottom in about 3-5 minutes. When I take it out of the oven, I put it on a cooling rack for 5 minutes, so it doesn’t get soggy in its “sweat”.

I’m willing to bet that the lack of a pizza stone is holding you back. A jelly roll pan is not going to hold heat like a pizza stone will, just like a thin metal frying pan won’t hold heat like a cast iron pan will, you know?

Pizza stones are not crazy expensive, and I think you’d notice an appreciable difference in the quality of your pizza if you invested in one. I know it’s a bit of a unitasker, but if you make pizza regularly, I really think you should make space in your kitchen for one!

With the dough, have you tried shaping it into a ball and letting it rest before you try to stretch it out? I sometimes let it rest 5 minutes, stretch it partway out, let it rest for another few minutes, and then finish stretching it out.

I do let my dough rest overnight (or, ahem, longer) in the fridge, then rest a bit on the counter before stretching out.

What FG describes is sorta like what I do but you don’t describe your dough as springing back to it’s former, smaller size. Mine does. So I stretch it out, then have to weigh it down with something (rolling pin, water bottle, etc) to keep it from reverting to previous size. After a minute or two I repeat the process. I find it aggravating and a real barrier to making homemade pizza more often.

As for the stone, yes. I think it might be time to break down and get this unitasker. If I keep making pizza despite my troubles with shaping, I guess I’m going to continue to make pizza.

Don’t do any kneading of the dough before you roll it out. The gluten is too elastic to handle it. When I first started making pizzas, I benefited from adding a little extra water in the dough when mixing – the dough was a little more forgiving.

When I have had the springing back problem the only thing I have found that works is to “throw” the crust. Just like at the real pizza places. Roll out the dough into a circle and throw into the air, punch it with your fist when it is on its’ way down, repeat as necessary. The kids love it!

I know I’m really late to the game with this comment. I had my dough spring back too. I let it rise in the fridge for about 5 hours then shaped it in to balls then let it rest for about 15 min. I think I man handled it too much. I think next time I’ll shape them in to balls before I put them in the fridge then just punch them down and let them rest on the counter the whole time the stone is heating up (30 min).

What really, really saved my butt with the springy dough was putting another sheet of parchment paper on top (I was rolling it out on a bottom piece of parchment to begin with). The dough stuck to the parchment instead springing back and I just peeled off the top piece.

Honestly, I have a metal pizza pan and a pizza stone and I can’t tell any difference between the two. I don’t like working with the heavy, cumbersome pizza stone. (I guess I’m the voice of dissention). I think a hot oven and a good pizza dough recipe (I haven’t tried the one Kristen uses but Lili at creativesavv.blogspot.com has a recipe my family enjoys) are key. Here’s the other thing–everyone likes their pizza a little different–it may take some experimentation to find what you like. Or you may find it’s worth the splurge to by it from your favorite pizzeria.

I use cornmeal instead of parchment, less cost/waste. I’ve recently switched from bread flour to AP and can’t tell a difference. As its much cheaper, I’ll stick to it. And it doesn’t require much extra rise time (20 min over 10). I add oregano, thyme, and basil to the crust and that gives it great flavor.

I have to second the commenter that said that everything they learned about making homemade pizza they learned from your blog. The only difference is I add 1 tsp each of granulated garlic and italian seasonings to my crust. Its worth it for the smell factor alone. I have to certainly agree that the pizza stone absolutely makes all the difference to great homemade pizza. I will definitely have to try the parchment paper since I’ve had several cheese ooze-overs and now have a smoke issue every time I use my oven. I grow weary of taking the batteries out of the two closest smoke detectors. I went out and bought some KA bread flour to try tonight so I will be interested to see if I notice a difference. I was shocked at how pricy it was ($5 on sale when I can get generic AP flour for about $1.80 here). Do you make your own sauce? If so, do you mind sharing the recipe?

Kim, we do something similar to our crust, but brush on melted butter first. KA bread flour is beyond my budget, but if you’re willing to compromise and get enriched bleached bread flour, it’s not so expensive. I bake my own bread, so I use a lot of bread flour. Some Costco stores have 25 lb. bags for about $10. I got a 25 lb. bag from Smart and Final (a restaurant supply/grocery store) for $9. Someday I hope to be able to buy the good stuff, but for now this is all I can afford. Bread flour makes the crust more bread-like and that’s the way we like our homemade pizza.

I will have to see if our Costco has the bread flour. I know I used to buy their AP flour all the time but then we canceled our membership for awhile. I did like the way the pizza turned out with the KA bread flour so I think I will take your suggestion and compromise as $5 flour isn’t really in my budget either. I bake my own bread too so it won’t go to waste (I’ve just been using AP flour for that as well).

Since your previous post on pizza making, I’ve been thinking about how to do this method since Pampered Chef says you shouldn’t preheat their stones. I contacted their customer service and they said it could crack from the temperature difference between the food and the stone. However, it seems that many people preheat their Pampered Chef stones and they do fine as long as you don’t get cold water on a hot stone. I got rid of my pizza peel after I found it I wasn’t supposed to preheat, but now I will be shopping for a new one.

I will definitely try this!! Back in the 1970’s my young son was very allergic to dairy. I made all our own pizzas.He was 13 before he realized pizza came with cheese everywhere else, I think! I made it with sauce, barbecue chicken shreds, or (sue me), hot dog slices–we ate hot dogs then,sorry.. of course pepperoni, sausage crumbles, just no cheese.

Madeline – That is why I started making my own pizzas too. My son can’t have dairy or soy so cheese of any kind is out. I make his with sauce and frozen chicken nuggets (so don’t feel bad about your hot dogs ) This is his favorite meal so its worth it to me to make it.

I buy bread flour in 50 lb sacks at Costco, by far the best price and the yeast is SUPER cheap there as well, along with olive oil, cheese, pepperoni, hmmm, I sound like a Costco commercial, but it IS cheaper for those items.

Hi Kristen, Thanks for sharing the recipe! I’ve been worry about baking up to 500 degree F because the direction in my parchment paper {Pergamino brand from Costco} says only safe for oven up to 425 degree F. I wonder if this is only for this particular parchment paper hmmm….

But really it won’t do much if it does burn. There’s not much to burn, since the stuff *under* the crust doesn’t have enough oxygen; burning paper will just make the crust a tad crisper; and an oven makes an excellent firebox – the flames can’t escape.

We’ve been making pizzas for years now, and our favorite frugal tip is to hit up the salad bar at the local supermarket for a variety of toppings choices. Everyone can pick out what they want, and you only get what you need – no food waste! You can get cheese there, too, but it’s often not cheaper.

Well Done – I have tried a few pizza dough recipes and this was by far the best one. I had gotten a stone for Christmas and had used a few times but like you didn’t really get much success from it. I did exactly as you suggested and it worked great.
My kids favorite(one of their favorite) dishes is my homemade stuffed pizza. I used to use pizza dough I bought from the pizza place. Now I make my own dough with my own sauce. I only need to get arround to making my own mozzarella and then I’ll be all set …. Great site and thanks for the tips

I made this on Friday and it was awesome. Thanks for the comment about doing on a baking sheet and then doing the last few minutes directly on the rack. My father-in-law had never had homemade pizza and LOVED it. I am sure it is also amazing on a pizza stone, but I recently gave mine to good will (oops!)

I made this too, the other night , and it was excellant. I’ve been making pizza for years and this was. Very good crust. I’m in between pizza stones right now, any suggestions. I use a cookie sheet and the crust does get nice and brown, but I’d like to go back to a pizza stone.

I’ve never had a pizza stone, and never really known anyone who has used one. For years I just sprayed my baker’s half sheets with oil, sprinkled them with cornmeal, and put the crust in. But my family kept begging me to try to make crust like the Pizza Hut pan pizzas they love. I read online that the key to the “pan pizza” crust is extra oil in the baking pan. I started pouring 2 to 3 tablespoons of oil into them, spreading it all around and then putting the crust in the pan, omitting the cornmeal all together. (If you use 4 to 5 tablespoons, you will get a crust even more like the pan pizzas, but I try to keep the health aspect in mind at least a little bit…) Everyone really likes it this way, but I was just given a pizza stone and can’t wait to try it out after reading this article. We’ll see what the verdict is. Public opinion is very important at my house. All changes in recipes have to pass with a majority vote–(not really, but it does make life easier.)

I’ve perused all of the 75 comments above (lol), and I haven’t seen anything on freezing the dough. Have you ever tried freezing it? I homeschool and work full-time, and it would be great to have several batches of frozen dough that I just have to thaw out during the week.

Really like your site! I also used Americas Test Kitchen. Which I think is affiliated with Cooks? Either way I use to use both. Cooks has a great recipe for pan seared chicken. On the pizza topic, ATK has a deep dish that is amazing! The trick is a semi boiled grated potato in the dough. Also cooking the dough a bit before topping. Also a tip they give you, that if you don’t actually have a pizza stone, you can use a cookie sheet turned upside down! And they are right. Anyway thanks for the roasted carrot recipe, going to try tonight.

I know this is an old post but I just wanted to say I always use this recipe and follow the directions for cooking it on a stone on high heat. It makes the BEST pizza we have ever had. Last time we made cinnamon bread sticks with half the dough..yum!!

Great recipe, although another example of why I need a pizza stone I did use a baking sheet and placed straight on baking rack for an extra 5 minutes. Seemed to work pretty well. Thanks for the great pizza recipe.

This is a great tutorial and I am pinning it. In the past, I’d made one large pizza on a T-fal air-bake pan, but I’m ready to get more “real” about our pizzas now Our family just did a bake your own night last night, and because I didn’t have the right tools, I used an inverted metal sheet pan to preheat, then used foil to make our pizzas on. The pizzas were good… I used my James Beard crust recipe I’d used in the past, but the foil stuck badly on the bottom. I had to turn each pizza completely over to peel it off! Obviously not what I wanted.
So, I’d already read several reviews about the Old Stone Oven stone and that is what I am ordering on Amazon. My question is, were you able to leave your parchment paper in the oven, at 500 degrees for the entire baking time? I’ve read several other sources that say to remove the parchment after 5 minutes, but that seems like a pain… especially for a family pizza night. If you could answer, that’d be great Thanks so much!

Made pizza over the weekend on my new pizza stone. This is now my go-to recipe for crust. It was SO much better than what I’d been making in the past. And thank you for the feedback. I actually cranked the temp to 550, and I still think the paper would have been fine the whole time, but I wanted to try sliding it out after 5 minutes and it worked beautifully. Slid right out from under the pizza. Thanks for sharing this post!

Hi,
I just made your pizza dough this afternoon and to say it was a HIT is an understatement! Thanks so much for putting out such a wonderful blog!
Question- do you use table salt or kosher salt in this recipe? The only change I made was to add 1/2 tsp of sugar to the dough.

Bread flour is not recommended because it makes a chewier dough–most pizzerias use AP. Extra-virgin olive oil is overwhelming a taste for pizza–very many pizzerias use corn oil. You really don’t need a pizza stone (lots of wasted energy to heat it up)–use an inverted sheet pan, so what I do is to roll out and shape the dough onto a pizza pan lined with parchment paper, then I par-bake the crust to set the dough, then I cook the dressed pizza on the parchment paper (without the pan) directly on the rack.

Try using cold water instead of warm. Refrigerate for 24 hrs. This slows down the fermentation process and makes the dough easier to work with and allows for a thinner pie. I agree, Cook’s Illustrated is the best.

Kristen, Thank you so much for the recipe and directions. The crust looks completely delicious. I agree that Cooks Illustrated is amazing. I have America’s Test Kitchen’s (same people) I Can’t Believe it’s Gluten Free and a few other recipe books by them & they are so helpful.

I have just started to try out your yeast bread recipes and I used your pizza recipe last night for the first time. It turned out beautifully! I don’t have a pizza stone, so I baked the pizza directly on the parchment paper (and slid it into the oven using a rimless baking sheet). There used to be a bake-your-own pizza place in my area called Homemade Pizza Co. that instructed you to bake directly on parchment paper so I figured it was worth a shot. The crust was so perfect I don’t even feel like I need a pizza stone! I have three little ones so I can see this becoming a Friday night tradition! Thank you!

So I’ve been searching for a crust like my local pizza place make sure it, and I googled “browned pizza crust.” Yours came up and honestly it’s the olive oil brushing that gives it that perfect flakey crust. Thank you. Look amazing btw.

I absolutely love this crust recipe. Also, all your tips for cooking on a stone are spot on. We make the best pizza now, and everyone in the family has fun helping.

Also, wanted to let you know that my nonstick cookware bottoms started peeling, so I decided to invest in All-Clad due in part to seeing how much you enjoy cooking with it. I got a wonderful deal on QVC! Can’t wait for it to arrive, so I can start using it. I decided it was better to pay more upfront and have for a lifetime than have to replace every ten years or so. I may have taken this idea from you, so thanks for that!!!